Max Velmans quotes

Consider how one silently reads the following sentence: ‘The forest ranger did not permit us to enter the reserve without a permit'. Note that on its first occurrence, the word ‘permit' was (silently) pro-nounced with the stress on the second syllable (permit), hereas on its second occurrence the stress was on the first syllable (permit)... The syntactic and semantic analysis required to determine the appropriate meaning of the word ‘permit' must have taken place prior to the allocation of the stress pattern; and this in turn, must have taken place prior to the phonemic image entering awareness. (Max Velmans)
Viewing the brain from the outside, Libet has shown that the experienced intention to perform an act is preceded by cerebral initiation. Why should the experienced decision to veto that intention, or to actively or passively promote its completion, be any different? View quote
Max Velmans
Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives. View quote
Max Velmans
In principle, it might be possible to obtain evidence of focal-attentive processing in the absence of awareness of what is being processed... in practice, however, a complete dissociation of consciousness from focal-attentive processing is difficult to achieve. View quote
Max Velmans
Thus, to understand what consciousness is, we need to understand what causes it, what its function(s) may be, how it relates to nonconscious processing in the brain and so on. View quote
Max Velmans